


Closet-Minded

by thegrimshapeofyoursmile



Category: All Elite Wrestling, Professional Wrestling
Genre: AU where Kota follows Kenny to AEW, Building A Home, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Furniture, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27710971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrimshapeofyoursmile/pseuds/thegrimshapeofyoursmile
Summary: “You know, I could have simply bought all of the furniture and paid someone to assemble it for us,” Kota says.///Kenny wants to assemble some furniture. Kota would rather do something else. Both are very happy, and very much in love.
Relationships: Ibushi Kota/Kenny Omega
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Closet-Minded

**Author's Note:**

> For my darling fiancée who is to blame for my current obsession with wrestling things, and who I buy the best furniture with.  
> Set in a vague AU where Kota is part of AEW as well.

“You know, I could have simply bought all of the furniture and paid someone to assemble it for us,” Kota says.

He thinks that it is a quite sensible idea, but Kenny has that expression where he is torn between exasperation and amusement. In the end, the latter wins out, the corners of his eye crinkle and his voice is full of fondness when he says, “Ibutan, please.”

Kota looks at him, then at the various pieces of what should eventually become a closet that are strewn around them, then back at Kenny, who studies the manual so intently that it would be no surprise if he burned a hole through it. When he notices Kota’s gaze, he lifts his head and smiles at him, looking tired but happy.

“It’ll feel better if we do it ourselves,” he says for what feels like the hundredth time. He is so proud of this: their first real home together, one that will be permanent, one that is not dependent on any promotion whatsoever. They bought this apartment in the States, just like they bought the apartment in Japan: together. And that is beautiful, that is great, Kota loves it, and especially he loves Kenny’s unadulterated happiness about the whole ordeal. Still, he can’t help but feel that all of this would be easier and less stressful if Kenny didn’t insist on assembling and arranging everything themselves. Kota doesn’t care much about all of that. All he cares about is that they’re together now, and that it will stay that way for a long time, hopefully. But it’s important to Kenny, even though he doesn’t fully understand it, so he tries to respect his needs.

Still, he sighs very deeply as he hands Kenny some screws. “I could fuck you on every inch of the floor instead of doing this. We don’t need all that stuff.”

“We don’t need a closet?” Kenny pauses for a moment. “There is a joke in there, but it doesn’t work in Japanese.”

“Explain it to me, then.”

Kenny smiles fondly and briefly squeezes his knee before he returns to the blasted manual. “If I explain it, it’s not funny anymore. Can you hold that board?”

Kota sighs again, but he holds the board in question and watches as Kenny drives some screws into the holes in the wood. He can only hope that he’s doing it correctly. The manual isn’t that complicated, actually, and it doesn’t come with a language barrier since it works by pictures only, but if he involves himself now more than holding and lifting things, he’ll be responsible if it turns out wrong, too, and he’d rather continue nagging.

“My poor, suffering Ibutan,” Kenny teases him, mouth full of screws in a way that gives Kota anxiety whenever he looks at him. So he reaches out and carefully plucks the screws from between Kenny‘s lips, one by one, until they all land on the board Kenny just screwed onto another board. It‘s kind of amazing, he has to give him that, to see that so many pieces, useless on their own, can become something useful and pretty when working together. He comes closer, moves between Kenny‘s legs, ignores his laughing protest and presses a kiss against the corner of his mouth, leans in and in and in until Kenny can‘t help but slump onto the rug, face turned upwards to watch Kota with laughing eyes.

“We still have to assemble half of the closet,“ he reminds Kota, yet doesn‘t move away when Kota presses his nose against his neck and inhales deeply.

“I want to be with you,” he says.

Kenny gets very quiet at that, but it’s not a sort of quiet that frightens him. He smiles against his neck when he feels a hand in his hair, on his shoulder blade, then Kenny says very , “And I want to be with you. But I also want a closet to put my clothes in eventually. And I’d love to be able to clear the floor from all this mess.”

It’s not as messy as two days ago where they painted their walls until both of their tank tops were soaked through, but Kota keeps that thought to himself. Instead, he sighs very deeply once more, rolls off of Kenny and tugs on one of his locks in a quick, playful manner before he decides to participate in this madness a little more actively. Maybe they’ll finish earlier then, and even though watching Kenny work might be very entertaining and pleasing to the eye, it’s not very fair.

“The bed is already there,” he still cannot help but point out, and he’s never been more glad that they decided to get a Japanese futon bed instead of a Western one. The tatami mats in their frame were done in half an hour, and they already laid out the futon. Last night they slept there for the first time, in their very own shared home, and when Kenny asked him what he had dreamed the next morning, Kota told him that he had dreamed of them eating rice. For some reason, that very mundane dream pleased Kenny quite a lot. He is a strange man, but then again, Kota can’t throw stones when sitting in a glass house.

Now his lover quirks an eyebrow. “Stop trying to get me into bed. It’s not going to happen until we’re done here.”

Kota whines playfully, but then he cracks his knuckles and gets down to business. It is a very beautiful closet, after all, made from heavy, dark wood with rice paper panels in the sliding doors. Another forty minutes pass, but then the closet finally stands, finished, and it fits so perfectly into its designated space that Kota can’t help but share Kenny’s joyful delight. Together they enthuse over the entire thing like other people would enthuse over a particularly cute toddler, opening and closing the sliding doors, wiping dust off the shelves, hopping in and out of the closet like giddy children. Their living room is still full with boxes that need to be unpacked and they have to wait for Adam Page to come over and help them with connecting the lamp cables since neither of them can do that, but the bedroom is done now except for a few details. There are their painted walls, their closet, and their bed with their night tables, and their curtains with the curtain rod they installed themselves, and Kenny was right: It is a pretty good feeling to know that they did all this by themselves (well, mostly).

“This is nice,” he says and means it. Their home is already a blend of their cultures and personalities, and there is something powerful about the way it represents their entangled lives.

Kenny, sometimes so very critical with himself and everything he does, surveys the bedroom and nods. “I mean, we need to hang our stuff on the walls, obviously, and the plants are missing. The books … God, all the unpacking …”

“We’ve got time,” Kota says. And that, perhaps, is the real beauty of all of this, because they’ve never had time before, not like this. It’s what makes all of this worth it, even though he misses Japan like he would miss a limb. But he’s never had to miss Japan before while he’s missed Kenny too often and too much to count. If he’s learned anything through his career, it’s that there is a price for everything. So far he’s willing to pay that price, especially since the gain is so worth it.

Kenny smiles, wraps his arms around Kota and tucks his face into the crook of his neck, full of silent but visible affection. “I’m so glad,” he whispers, and Kenny’s happiness is a living, breathing, infectious thing.

“Me too,” he replies, and he has never meant anything more.


End file.
